


manufactured happiness in the form of a plastic smile

by alluraismyqueen



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, I DIDN'T GO THROUGH A SOUL-SEARCHING JOURNEY HALFWAY THROUGH WRITING THESE LMAO, I called this langst before but god. that's a shit term lol, JUST SO YOU KNOW I EDITED THESE TAGS MONTHS AFTER I POSTED THIS, amirite ladies, and basically lance is Sad, anyway, anyway it's just straight up sad, because projecting literally all of your insecurites onto your favorite character/s is the way to go, but like, failure/insecurity, no one dies, not...langst or whatever the fuck, there's no happy ending btw, this is for vldangstweek day two, this is just straight up langst, this was e n t i r e l y me projecting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 03:07:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10376481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alluraismyqueen/pseuds/alluraismyqueen
Summary: Lance is always one step behind. He always has been.





	

Lance knows he’s not the best.

He’s known this for a while now, ever since he went to the Garrison and everyone was so competitive and smart and they could wing tests and get A’s, while Lance was working the hardest he’d ever had to barely pass. Lance figured out he’s far from the best when he failed all the simulators and got the commanders angry with him. He knew he wasn’t the best when everyone he tried to befriend (save Hunk) shied away, either because they didn’t want to be seen hanging around the local class idiot or because they couldn’t handle his coming-apart-at-the-seams personality.

Lance met this all with a smile and a joke, always telling himself to fake it ‘til he made it, because soon he would reach the farthest galaxies and meet alien races and it would all be okay. Besides, he didn’t need to host a pity party. (It would be pathetic and, besides, pretending feelings aren’t there is much easier than confronting them.)

Lance has always known, somewhere in his head, that he will never ascend average. But no one else needs to know that sometimes it’s hard not to cry because his mind won’t let him think about anything but the fact that he’s never going to be good enough, much less great, so he manufactures his own happiness and broadcasts it to the world. It feels artificial, and, sometimes, Lance thinks the world can feel it, too. But he’s usually wrong, because nobody ever does or says anything about how his smile never really meets his eyes, or how his voice sounds just a little too upbeat (which are both so obvious to Lance; how can no one else see?). 

Ever since he’s been up in space, the feelings have just gotten worse. He’s always one step behind everyone else, just short of some milestone that’s called “good enough,” always either too much or too little. During training exercises, he always does the worst of everyone, held back by lack of skill or lack of confidence, which has Allura yelling at him and Shiro giving him this kind of disappointed look that makes Lance want to leave his body and be someone else, if not forever than just for a minute. 

Battles with the Galra are always hard for Lance, too, because there’s so much light and noise and feeling and everything, all at once, and he can never focus, or he just focuses too much on one small thing, but everyone else does just fine, and it hurts, because, again, he’s too much or too little, and that can never be fixed. (Not to mention that sometimes, when the team is in a bad mood, they yell at Lance in a battle when he’s not doing what he’s supposed to do - fight like they do - which only makes it so much worse, but he can’t tell them that, because that’s selfish and it’ll just distract them more.)

Conversations and relationships with the team are two things Lance has trouble with, too. Because he always talks too much and too quickly, and his brain moves at three hundred miles per hour, so he’s always stumbling over his own words, and he’s just so much, that most of his relationships with his teammates seem like half-relationships, with Lance being the only one trying to do anything for them. Sometimes he’ll try to be quieter and give everyone more room, but when he does that, he’s too quiet, almost silent, and it puts everyone on edge because No, that’s not right, Lance is the talkative one. And when he gets tired of suppressing his thoughts, he spews all the words out at once, forgetting to pause and breathe in between sentences, and the attention falls from him, until he’s having a one-sided conversation with the air about whatever the fuck Lance thought would maybe interest the person he was talking to. 

All these things keep him up at night, sometimes, no matter how much he tries to quell them or hide them in the far reaches of his brain (or maybe even get rid of them entirely). And sometimes Lance will let a few tears slip out before he remembers how goddamn pathetic and selfish he is for pitying himself so much. Everyone else has their own troubles, all bigger than Lance’s, which are the ones he really should be thinking about and what he can do to maybe help a few of his team members. 

So he puts on a plastic smile and pretends it doesn’t hurt when he’s so far behind everyone else that reaching out for them just looks like he’s examining his fingernails.

**Author's Note:**

> i have a headache but it was worth it
> 
> tumblr: wlwvoltron


End file.
